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Starting this Friday, Walmart will be selling the iPhone for use with wireless provider Straight Talk, which is offering a $45-per-month contract with unlimited voice, data, and texting. This sale will make it one of the cheapest ways—as measured over a two-year period—to get a prepaid iPhone. Walmart says it will offer $25-per-month financing for the phone itself if customers use a Walmart credit card.

Straight Talk, which uses AT&T’s towers as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), is becoming an increasingly popular option for prepaid customers who want to use an iPhone without paying high prices. (Full disclosure: I am a Straight Talk customer, using an unlocked iPhone 4, and have been since April 2012.)

"We believe customers shouldn't have to choose between saving money and having the latest technology," said Seong Ohm, senior vice president of Entertainment for Walmart US, said in a statement on Tuesday. "Now customers can have the coveted iPhone with unlimited talk, text, and data without a contract for $70 a month thanks to our exclusive Straight Talk plan and industry first financing offer."

Walmart customers will be able to buy the iPhone 5 16GB for $649, and the iPhone 4 8GB for $449.

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Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is out now from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar

It's limited to 3G and it's heavily metered in speed and network availability.. Basically think of it as AT&Ts B-Team, but still a great option. There is no such thing as unlimited data when it comes to us cellular carriers.

I'm not sure what to make of the sub-headline "Retail giant partners with Straight Talk, using AT&T's towers, starting Friday.", when Walmart owns Straight Talk.

He says "Now customers can have the coveted iPhone with unlimited talk, text, and data without a contract for $70 a month"... but I'm pretty sure $45 + $25 = $70 exactly, so you're gonna be paying the equivalent of $70/mo anyway for 18+ months, whether you pay part of that up front for the phone or use Walmart's financing.

Unlimited voice, text, and data? And only $45 a month? Whats the catch. This sounds too good to be true. Are you limited to 3G?

I've looked into NET10, which is the same company as Straighttalk. The biggest thing that I can see might be the biggest issue is these customers don't have access to ATT's LTE network. 4G (HSPA) and 3G are totally fine. I know people on NET10 that stream music all day and use about 10-15g a month and they never get throttled or even a nastygram, for what that's worth.

my girlfreind inherited my iphone 4 from me and we put it on Straight Talk several months ago. It works fine, except for MMS and visual voice mail. Neither of those work at all. Maybe they straightened that out with this new WalMart deal?

It's limited to 3G and it's heavily metered in speed and network availability.. Basically think of it as AT&Ts B-Team, but still a great option. There is no such thing as unlimited data when it comes to us cellular carriers.

I'm not sure what to make of the sub-headline "Retail giant partners with Straight Talk, using AT&T's towers, starting Friday.", when Walmart owns Straight Talk.

Reportedly you get throttled down in speed once you go over 2G a month, but I can't confirm that. A google search brings up plenty of complaints about it.

So does this mean if I buy one of the "real" nano sims I will get my ability to do MMS text messaging back finally?

I just bought an unlocked GSM iPhone 5 this weekend. Did the trim your own nano sim trick successfully, tried to load from my old ATT-locke 3gs and discovered that the damn thing overwrites the VoiceMail settings back to the Visual VoiceMail screen—and since it knows it's on the ATT network, it doesn't show the "Call VoiceMail manually" button.

Insert much rage swearing and about 4 hours to rebuild my phone from scratch without any texting, email, call history etc. But at least I can check voicemail normally and see when I have been left voicemail messages, which you can't do with the ATT screen. I even went back to the Apple Store to discuss the issue and stumped not one but about 3 geniuses at once. They were all kind of gathered around going "Oh! Do this, and this, and… oh wait, but you're using ATT towers. Hmmmm…"

I like the idea of being able to cut and run at any point with no consequence, but it feels like around Colorado Verizon has a vastly superior LTE network. Saddled with 3G and minimal savings over 2 years doesn't seem great to me, but expanding the pre-paid market should be good for many.

...Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following:...(iii) uploading, downloading or streaming of audio or video programming or games;...

I have an iPhone 4S on Straight Talk and I can stream Pandora and watch YouTube and such just fine. The only downsides I've noticed so far are that I haven't been able to get MMS to work, and also visual voicemail doesn't work. My phone doesn't do LTE anyway, so that's not an issue for me, but the 3G speeds I'm getting are decent (usually at least 2mbps).

The biggest con to Straight Talk (for people asking "what's the catch?" is that you really need to keep your data usage down. From folks' experience, if you go over 2gb/month or 100-200mb per day you risk getting your account closed.

I'm still loitering on a Virgin mobile $35/mo plan (dumped my old Android and its $25/mo plan finally last month) but Straight Talk on AT&T towers is tempting. Might be interested for my wife (she uses a lot more minutes).

EDIT: I checked, and lately it just seems like they throttle you instead on AT&T sims. That's a big improvement upon their cancel-abruptly strategy they had going earlier last year for AT&T sims.

So it's confirmed the iPhone they're doing is on AT&T's network? Tracfone also operates Straight Talk on Sprint and Verizon towers. T-Mobile too, but obviously that won't be what iPhone is connecting to right now.

greenmky wrote:

The biggest con to Straight Talk (for people asking "what's the catch?" is that you really need to keep your data usage down. From folks' experience, if you go over 2gb/month or 100-200mb per day you risk getting your account closed.

I'm still loitering on a Virgin mobile $35/mo plan (dumped my old Android and its $25/mo plan finally last month) but Straight Talk on AT&T towers is tempting. Might be interested for my wife (she uses a lot more minutes).

They don't close the account, but you get throttled. In my experience with the T-Mobile version if it's only a soft cap - the AT&T one might be a harder cap.

naphini wrote:

gowreck wrote:

You have unlimited web browsing.

Quote:

...Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following:...(iii) uploading, downloading or streaming of audio or video programming or games;...

I have an iPhone 4S on Straight Talk and I can stream Pandora and watch YouTube and such just fine. The only downsides I've noticed so far are that I haven't been able to get MMS to work, and also visual voicemail doesn't work. My phone doesn't do LTE anyway, so that's not an issue for me, but the 3G speeds I'm getting are decent (usually at least 2mbps).

Any word on if they ironed out the Visual Voicemail stuff, now that the iPhone is official?

the built in visual voicemail will not work as that is a function of carriers that support it. They do allow for conditional forwarding, however. That means you can send your voicemails to services like YouMail or Google Voice.

The biggest headache users will face with going to Straight Talk with an iPhone is getting MMS working correctly. To access those APN settings you either need to jailbreak and install TetherMe or you need to do the SIM swap method. Carrier certificates from sites like Unlockit.co.nz will not get MMS working for you.

my girlfreind inherited my iphone 4 from me and we put it on Straight Talk several months ago. It works fine, except for MMS and visual voice mail. Neither of those work at all. Maybe they straightened that out with this new WalMart deal?

I think on an iPhone you have to do some tricky stuff to get MMS working, but it's no problem on an Android, you just edit your MMS gateway or whatever it's called. VVM doesn't work (or didn't, prior to this).

Any word on if they ironed out the Visual Voicemail stuff, now that the iPhone is official?

the built in visual voicemail will not work as that is a function of carriers that support it. They do allow for conditional forwarding, however. That means you can send your voicemails to services like YouMail or Google Voice.

They don't allow conditional forwarding if you go with the BYOD T-Mobile plan, which is a pretty big gripe of mine. It's a T-Mobile limitation though, they don't allow it with any of their MVNOs.

Any word on if they ironed out the Visual Voicemail stuff, now that the iPhone is official?

the built in visual voicemail will not work as that is a function of carriers that support it. They do allow for conditional forwarding, however. That means you can send your voicemails to services like YouMail or Google Voice.

They don't allow conditional forwarding if you go with the BYOD T-Mobile plan, which is a pretty big gripe of mine. It's a T-Mobile limitation though, they don't allow it with any of their MVNOs.

Oh yeah, I remember reading about that. The AT&T side allows it, at least.

I have a Galaxy Nexus with Straight Talk (on AT&T's network) and I just totally dig it. Fantastic stuff all around.

There's supposedly some issues if you use more than 100MB/day or 2GB/mo but I must just be one of those weirdos that only uses a smartphone for internet and occasional youtube. I've never gone over 65-70MB in a single day (usually no more than 3-5MB) and I've barely approached 550MB at most in a month. I do have wifi at home, work, parents' house, and in-laws', so places I go frequently I don't have to use data for.

So I guess if you're a very heavy smartphone user without access to wifi, it could be an issue.

Then again, paying $450 for an iPhone 4 might indicate you have issues. I paid half that for my GNex on eBay (indistinguishable from new other than no box) right after the Nexus 4 was announced.